so I’m going to start this one.

At the bar where, in the unfortunate circumstance that I am unable to make my way down to Oxford, I watch Rebel football games alongside a few dozen other Ole Miss fans, there is a always strong-ish contingent of Razorback fans. We call it “our” bar, but in the eyes of the management, it’s “their” bar as well. We share it. It sucks. Anyway, the gentleman who runs the joint told me that he was looking forward to hosting both the Rebels and Razorbacks simultaneously for this upcoming week.

“You know they hate us, like bad. We just find them annoying but they, get this, really hate us,” I told him. “You’re going to have to keep us separate I think.”

“Oh, I’ve got that covered. They get the patio outside, y’all get the 2nd story (SIDE NOTE: The bar has an upstairs, a downstairs, and a patio—all of which have high def screens out the wazoo). I figure we’d keep them outside because where else would you keep a bunch of pigs?”

Keep in mind: the guy is a Maryland fan. So a neutral observer of SEC football brought the Arkansas hate; I loved it.

Also, as we were arriving, Arkansas fans were leaving. They just lost to Florida. One very drunk Razorback started running his mouth. I did my best to ignore him but I couldn’t help but hear him readily admit to the fact that “we fuckin’ hate Ole Miss but man y’all don’t really hate us that much.”

“Wow,” I thought. “This guy, in a rare moment of drunken clarity, admits to the Arkansan obsession with Ole Miss. Fantastic.”

Anyway, that’s my one story out of about a billion.

…because of the history in it. The fact that the schools dispute the series win count, the fact that it has been such a close series, the old-school SEC vs (now defunct) SWC, etc…

But probably the whole thing gelled for me when Nutt joined us in November 2007. I immediately remembered the cars from AK with the whole “Houston, We Have a Problem…,” “Fire Nutt,” and so forth. As we passed the cars, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be sweet to win this one!” Of course, with O as our coach, it was not to be. UA dismantled us defensively and danced away with the win of over 40 pts.

I thought the folks driving those cars might have changed their minds after that display, but we all know how that story ended. I still think we came out WAY ahead of them when the deal was done. I like a coach who is demonstrative on the sideline. I like a coach who has a childlike enthusiasm for the game. Remember Cutcliffe and his “Bing Crosby-esque” appearance on the sidelines? Yes, we won alot of games with him and did pad our bowl record with him, but I like for my coach to at least appear he is interested in the ball game I’m watching and HE’S coaching. He always made me think he was suffering from narcolepsy!

I am excited about getting this bunch on our turf this week. It’d be fun (aaaaand greatly appreciated) if they have the same emotional let-down this week after their near-miss @ Florida that we had last season at the same point.

The O-Line mans up like they did against a crap UAB team this past Saturday. I’m really looking forward to our D-Backs picking Mallett off about 5 times. Mallett is great, but I’m hoping we can get some pressure on him and force some errors. As we have all seen, our D-Backs are 10X better then we thought they would be. This should be a great matchup to watch. However, our friggin’ Defense CAN’T DO IT ALL!!! Hopefully our offense will come to play, if so this might be one of the best games of the weekend.

Go Rebels and Go F yourself Hogs!

BIB

The irony that this fan base derisively describes their former coach as a “snake in the grass” – or something else akin to “liar” – has a weight that almost defies physics.

Talking to an Arkansas fan is like talking to your pharmacist after using Viagra a few times. The pharmacist tells you, “that stuff gave me a painful 4-day erection!” And you say, “well, I’ve been impotent since January of 2004, and, honestly, my experiences have been more positive than negative, y’know, relative to being completely devoid of feeling down there for five years. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, but I’m going to take my chances” But, then, instead of the pharmacist saying, “Okay, well, different strokes for different folks,” he curses at you without ceasing and keeps telling you how sorry you’ll be in ten years. Then, he comes by your house every day and screams at your neighbors, looking for someone who agrees that you are being completely irrational.

Hey, Arkansas, ten years is still nine years from now. Keep your “I told you so[s]” for some possible time in the future when you’ve got something worth telling us.

…will it improve Ole Miss’ chances at beating the arkansas pigs Saturday?

…my grandfather, who was a die-hard Hogs fan but also loved the Rebels, didn’t live to see Arkansas join the SEC. I can’t say which way he would’ve swung if he had, but I like to think he would have put the feelings of his Ole Miss-graduate children and grandchildren first.

Fuck you, SWC, for breaking up!

I really need the Rebs to pull this one out. All I ever hear is wacky Razorback fans continue to say how “HOOTEN DALE SUX!” and “MALLETT IS GONNA THROW ALL OVER Y’ALL!” and “MAN DOESN’T MY SISTER LOOK GOOD!?” I still hear crap about the game last year, and the year before that, and the one where that guy went streaking, and that time Bobby Petrino left that team in the middle of the season and…

You get the picture.

I just want them to shut the hell up.

Jevan, you’re from Texas…so you naturally don’t like AR anyway, right? Just please win this one, and I won’t ask for anything else…except beating Tennessee…and LSU…and State…and Auburn….and (ulgh…) Northern Arizona.
But other than that, I won’t ask for anything else.

One of my saddest Ole Miss memories was the 7 overtime game that Arkansas one. Attending a rural Pine Belt school meant I was one of about 5 Ole Miss fans. I remember laying in the floor face down after we came up a yard short on that 2 point conversion begging my dad not to send me to school on Monday. I knew that every MS State fan at my school (roughly 90% of the student body) would love to remind me of our devastating loss. That is when my hate of Arkansas began. They gave MS State fans a reason to talk to trash to me. That is an unforgivable sin. Since then I have developed many reasons to hate Arkansas, many of which can be found on peopleofwalmart.com (honestly count the number of pictures from Arkansas). Still, I have pride in saying I do not consider Arkansas a rival. No matter what the media or Arkansas fans want to think, we simply aren’t rivals. They’re really annoying, sure. They’ve given me bad days, of course. But essentially I don’t care what happens to them except for this week. I definitely hate them more than the average team, or even the average SEC team, but they are not rivals. Rivals or not, I pray we win this game for a million reasons. And oddly enough the main reason might be so I don’t have to read the Facebook statuses of MS State fans describing how their life is complete because oLe Pi$$ lost.

Hotty Toddy!

outside of a Chili’s. In Starkville. On a random Saturday in February.

Those people are psychos.

Every inch of that marked by the Mississippi River, which divides towns that are tenths of a mile away from eachother – as the crow flies – into terra incognita, places where people can live their entire lives within eye shot of eachother and yet never meet. There are two bridges that span the river in all of that ground. One crosses at Helena into rural Coahoma County, into what I would guess is the outskirts of Lula, MS. The second crosses from Lake Village directly into Greenville. I am from the latter.

Because of many socio-economic factors (schools, industry, religion etc.), Lake Village and Greenville are bound to eachother – much moreso than Helena and outer Coahoma County. I say all this only to point out that while 99% of Ole Miss fans only think about this game for 7 days a year, those of us from Greenville have suffered this lunacy 10-fold since the Nutt hire.

Before we had a relilable U.S. Corps of Engineers, the river was a much more dangerous thing. In seasons where news of excessive rains from up north reached those of us along the river, we would have to set out levee patrols. Arkansas farmers would paddle across the river at night with crews of their own employees and maliciously damage the MS levees. If the levee broke on the east, that water wouldn’t threaten the west bank. Gunfire was often the only deterrent. We’re talking about the 20th century here. Actual state vs. state warfare/murders.

Also, they’re all psycho-rubes. So there’s that.

That was a reply to Bill Fremp. I spent my early childhood in Greenville.

So no worries, RobRob. And Gonzo, I have no fucking idea how you’ve convinced yourself that Arkansas is good. Great, you played a close game against a Florida team on a Goddamn mission to lose. Awesome. Whoop-dee-doo. The fact that you’re taking positives away from that game (aside from your DL performance, that’s a legit positive) shows how buttfucking retarded you are.

Also, the fact that you don’t capitalize “I”, don’t know the difference between “to” and “too”, and use strings of exclamation points in a totally non-satirical manner shows me that your knowledge of history doesn’t stretch that far beyond what you ate for breakfast and the last time you beat your dick.

So what our discussions occasionally meander from sports and into other interesting topics (history, culture, music, et cetera)? Deal with it. Don’t get your feelings hurt because shit that goes on around here on planet Earth is very often way above your head.